The Therapeutic Joy of Purim
The Jewish feast of Purim celebrates the deliverance of the Jewish people from the attempt by the Persian king to kill all Jews in the Persian Empire. His plan was foiled by Mordecai and Esther, and we read about it in the Book of Esther in the Bible. The day of deliverance became a day of feasting and rejoicing. And it continues to be a day of joy in the Jewish calendar. Purim begins tonight. And it has a message for all of us. Rabbi Sacks is one of the most prominent Jewish leaders in the world and a member of the British Parliament. His email newsletter today is about the joy of Purim. Two paragraphs from Rabbi Sacks are quoted below, but the rest of his post titled “The Therapeutic Joy of Purim” is worth reading. There’s a universal message in the words of Rabbi Sacks.
Yet what exactly are we celebrating on Purim? The mere fact that we survived? That Haman’s decree of genocide was not enacted? That the evil decree: L’harog u’lehabed u’lehashmid, to kill, destroy, and exterminate every single Jew, young and old, men and women, on a single day, was averted? That is not a cause for joy, it is cause for relief. That is not a cause for celebration, but really for post-traumatic stress disorder. So the question I am presenting here is, what is this unique joy of Purim?
I would like to propose the following answer. There are two kinds of joy. There’s expressive joy, the joy you experience and communicate because that’s how you feel. But there’s also therapeutic joy, the joy you will yourself to feel in order to protect yourself against negative emotions. And when we rejoice on Purim, on this festival which is actually the festival about antisemitism, we are saying something very important. “We will not be intimidated. We will not be traumatised. We will not be defined by our enemies. We will live with the threats and even laugh at them because what we can laugh at, we cannot be held captive by.” And that therefore is really what the joy of Purim is about. It’s about surviving, and beyond that, thriving, even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. It’s a way of saying, “I will eat and I will drink and I will celebrate and I will not let dark clouds enter my mind or my heart.”